{"id":13405,"date":"2017-01-13T12:34:43","date_gmt":"2017-01-13T11:34:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=13405"},"modified":"2017-01-13T12:34:43","modified_gmt":"2017-01-13T11:34:43","slug":"going-spooning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=13405","title":{"rendered":"Going spooning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/lovespoons.gif\" width=\"208\" height=\"208\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 20px 50px;\" alt=\"Welsh love spoons (llwyau caru)\" \/><\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a tradition in Wales of men carving spoons out of wood and presenting them to the ladies they love. If a lady accepts a spoon, then she and the man are considered a couple &#8211; engagements and weddings were apparently not common in rural Wales until the 18th century [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.welsh-lovespoons.co.uk\/history\">source<\/a>]. The websites that discuss the love spoon (llwyau caru) tradition usually mention that it&#8217;s the origin of the English expression &#8220;to go spooning&#8221;, which is one I haven&#8217;t come across before.<\/p>\n<p>A quick search on Google finds a number of books that include the phrase &#8220;to go spooning&#8221;, and from the context it appears to mean to go courting, but it&#8217;s not always clear. Are you familiar with this phrase at all?<\/p>\n<p>Spooning has another meaning &#8211; &#8220;To lie down behind and against (another person) so that both bodies face the same direction with the knees drawn up slightly like nested spoons&#8221; [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefreedictionary.com\/spooning\">source<\/a>], but I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s what &#8220;to go spooning&#8221; is about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a tradition in Wales of men carving spoons out of wood and presenting them to the ladies they love. If a lady accepts a spoon, then she and the man are considered a couple &#8211; engagements and weddings were apparently not common in rural Wales until the 18th century [source]. The websites that discuss [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,10,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-language","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}